New Post from Vintage Vicki, Forget-Me-Nots, and Kate!!

Sorry for no updates in a while! I was without internet service for a week and then I went on vacation for a week. I'm still trying to catch up! LOL It's so easy to get behind but so hard to get ahead!

Anyway, I will be posting a lesson for Heritage Hunting later on Sunday or Monday. It will be about the census, so if you have any census success stories or questions or anything, get ready!! And we'll see you next Tuesday evening at the Heritage Hunting chat in the Heritage Scrap chat room!!

Now, here are a couple of messages from the Heritage Scrap ladies!


Hi Everyone, Founder's Day is here! One year ago on August 1, 2008, Kate opened Heritage Scrap for business. We will be celebrating all month. Stop in the store and check out the incredible designer's collaboration of Heritage Builders - tools to use to document your pedigree and family history. I will be starting a challenge this weekend using the new collaboration kits. Look for details in the forum and for layouts in the gallery. Keep watching for updated information, we'll have more happening. Below, I will paste what Kate posted at the store - don't forget to stop in for some great sales! And please drop in throughout the month to visit and participate in the events. We all look forward to getting to know you! Theresa aka ForgetMeNots


It's our one year anniversary this Saturday and to celebrate we are putting the ENTIRE store on sale for 50% off! Also, beginning next week on Monday, we will have special challenges, a weekly product raffle and great savings on both new and current product catalogs.

Our new Designer Collab, Heritage Builders, is one of our finest collections to date. With these mini kits you can put together a gorgeous family tree. There are charts, ala carte elements, borders and some of the most beautiful backgrounds I have ever seen. Each kit is $2.00 during the month of August! You can find them HERE!!

Beginning Sunday, August 2nd - Friday, August 7th - spend $25 or more in the store and be entered in a drawing to win one a $25 gift certificate, good for all products in the shop. Winner will be announced Saturday, August 8th at 12pmET.

Sales starts Friday, July 31st - with a special one day storewide 50% off sale on Saturday, August 1st. Each week we will have something new for you - could be product giveaways, challenges, chats or games - stay tuned for the details.

Above all, we want to thank you for your patronage and support over the past year. We have grown a lot, learned a lot and remain focused on providing you with some of this industry's highest quality products. We appreciate your business and look forward to many more years, providing you with inspirational, unique and upscale art for your family research & heritage scrapbooking projects.

Wonderful Genealogical Site Found on the Internet

Wow! I have just found a website that is new to me - maybe not to you - that is awesome! It is About.com's genealogy section! They have articles on everything! There are articles for newbies right through to very detailed articles for experts. And the structure of the site is very user friendly - headings and subheadings allow you to drill down quickly onto any topic.

And they have links to a few great blogs and newsletters with RSS feeds so that you can get new material sent right to your yahoo or google home page or other feed reader.

The only bad thing that I have found so far is that I have a ton of tabs open, keep finding more and more articles to read, and just cannot read everything fast enough! I have been on the site for hours and can't get enough of it! Each time I read one article, a few more related articles are shown, then a few more, and a few more until I am lost in reading!

Check it out for yourself! Warning: Allow yourself plenty of allotted time - beginning in the evening may lead to pulling an all-nighter!

Heritage Hunting Chat and Assignment for July 7, 2009

Hi to all of you Heritage Hunters!!

Tonight at our chat we will talking about Birth Records and Documents and how to use them in your research. Chat is at 9:00 pm Eastern Time or 6:00 pm Pacific Time in the Heritage Scrap chat room. Come join in the fun! Tonight we have a Special Surprise!!

Your assignment this week will be to find a birth record or document for at least one member of your Pedigree Chart. You may then scrap it (digitally or with paper) or otherwise decorate it, or you may photograph your document, and upload it to the Heritage Hunting gallery. Anyone using at least 50% of their materials from the Heritage Scrap Shoppe will be entered into the random drawing for a prize from our shoppe to be announced later in the week. You may upload as many entries as you wish to share with us. Each eligible layout will be entered into the random drawing.

Heritage Hunting - Birth Records and Sources

Hello again all of you happy Heritage Hunters!

Ok, so you have a good handle on your pedigree chart and you have some family group sheets going on some of your ancestors and their families. Good beginning, firm foundation! Now lets start getting more detailed information about each person - documented and verified details!

Let's start with a person's birth - easy, right? Not!!! Just look at their birth certificate, right? Not!!! Not?? Yep, not!! Most municipalities and even states did not record births or require their recordings until late in the 1800s and even then, the practice was not common or enforced until well into the early 1900s. If your ancestor of that *transition* time period did in fact record the births of their children, you may have a problem finding exactly where they recorded those facts. It may be at their church or parish, at the county courthouse, or at early governmental offices such as a health department. You may find documents or letters confirming a birth within a veteran's military discharges or pension files. All of these places would probably have an *official* record of the birth so would be considered primary documents. They were probably filed by a close relative and close in time to the actual event.

Sometimes, the recording was done later - even as late as when the birth child was an adult! These are called *delayed birth certificates* and are usually filed by a secondary source person at a time far from the actual event. Obviously, these type records may be much less reliable. How does an adult know for sure exactly where or when they were born?? It is all hearsay or oral history (or legend) by the time the certificate was made.

Therefore, you may have to resort to other means of obtaining detailed and accurate birth information. Family Bibles are fantastic for these types of undocumented events as are family correspondence and newspaper announcements. Baptism or christening records from a church are great sources and even considered primary sources in many cases. Lastly and least reliable of all are census records. When comparing census records over a long period of time, you will notice that the census interval of time passed is always 10 years, the age of the ancestor may be greater than or less than the same 10 years! The difference is usually only by a few years but also can be by many years! Ages on census records usually tend to be older for the younger folks and younger for the older respondents, with the female inaccuracies almost always greater than their male counterparts.

The farther back in time that you go with your ancestors, the less accurate the birth date and place will be usually. This is especially true for ancestors who are migrating, emigrating or are further into some sort of transition. Again, if church records are not available, the next best thing would be family correspondence. Lacking that, I don't know any more to tell you! Time to hit the big guys for more advice!

Birth certificates and other sources did not always contain a lot of helpful information. Most will mention date and place, and usually parents, but that may be all you get! Of course with birth certificates of long ago as with those of today, there may be *fudging*. Even though there may not have been as many *unknown* or wrongly reported fathers then as now, further searching and verifying may be needed.

Sometimes you may come across more than one date, place, parents, or other detail - even from some normally reliable source. Save them all!! It may come to a decision on your part as to which piece of information seems most logical that you use or publish based on your overall, general knowledge of the person.

Obtaining copies of birth certificates can range from a few cents for a copy up to $20 - $25 or more for each one! Rates seem to be raising as more and more people join our hobby and give states an opportunity to profit from our curiosity!

Websites relating to finding and documenting birth documents:

United States Vital Records
Cyndi's List
Ancestry.com Learning Center
Family History Lesson Series

Websites to look for specific birth certificates or church records would probably be easiest to find using a search engine and name a particular place. The Church of Latter Day Saints (LDS) has sent researchers all over the world scanning church records and other documents so you may be able to find scans of some birth certificates or documents by visiting their website, searching and then ordering microfilm through their regional family libraries.

This Day in History, July 6

On July 6th, 1785, the dollar was unanimously chosen as the official currency of the United States.

Other Notable Events, July 6

In 1699, pirate Capt. William Kidd was seized in Boston and deported to England where he was hanged.

In 1854, the Republican Party was formally established at a meeting in New York City.

In 1885, French bacteriologist Louis Pasteur inoculated the first human being, a boy who had been bitten by a rabid dog. The youngster didn't develop rabies.

In 1919, a British dirigible landed at New York's Roosevelt Field to complete the first airship crossing of the Atlantic.

In 1923, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was formed.

In 1933, the first Major League Baseball All-Star Game was played at Comiskey Park in Chicago. The American League beat the National League, 4-2.

In 1942, diarist Anne Frank and her family took refuge in a secret section of an Amsterdam warehouse where they hid from the Nazis for two years. Finally discovered, they were shipped to concentration camps where Anne died.

In 1944, fire in the big top of the Ringling Brothers, Barnum & Bailey Circus in Hartford, Conn., killed 167 people, two-thirds of them children, and injured 682 others.

In 1957, while attending a church picnic near Liverpool, 15-year-old Paul McCartney met 16-year-old John Lennon. Lennon's band was playing at the picnic and by the end of the day McCartney had joined the group.

In 1958, Alaska became the 49th U.S. state.

In 1971, Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong, one of the 20th century's most influential American musicians, died at age 69.

In 1976, women were first admitted to the U.S. Naval Academy. The other military academies soon followed suit.

In 1984, U.S. President Ronald Reagan, in a TV interview, said it was a "probability" that many young people now paying into Social Security "will never be able to receive as much as they're paying."

In 1992, a bomb exploded near the car carrying French President Mitterrand's wife during a visit to Kurdish settlements in northern Iraq. She was unhurt but at least two other people were killed.

In 1994, a firestorm killed 14 forest fire fighters near Glenwood Springs, Colo.

Also in 1994, U.S. President Bill Clinton visited Latvia, becoming the first U.S. president to travel to the Baltic region.

In 1997, the Mars Pathfinder deployed the remote-controlled Sojourner to explore the surface of Mars.

In 1999, U.S. first lady Hillary Clinton announced she was forming an committee to look into running for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-N.Y. No first lady had before sought public office.

In 2004, U.S. Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., the presumptive Democratic Party nominee for president, chose Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., as his running mate.

In 2005, New York Times reporter Judith Miller was sent to jail for refusing to name her source in connection with the leaking of a CIA agent's identity to the media.

Also in 2005, London was chosen for the site of the 2012 Olympic Games in a close decision over Paris.

In 2006, a record $145 billion class action award against five tobacco companies was overturned by the Florida Supreme Court.

In 2007, a three-judge U.S. Court of Appeals in Cincinnati dismissed a lawsuit challenging the legality of the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping program.

Copyright 2009 by United Press International

Holiday Weekend!!! Hurray!!

Its the start of the holiday weekend!! Hip, hip, hurray!!! Get out and have some good, old-fashioned fun in the sun! Picnics, parades, festivals, swimming, barbecues, you name it and you'll find it to do this weekend. Take lots and lots of photos and get ready to have a scrappin' good time! And for all of you scrappers who like to be prepared and have plenty of photos to match your digi-kits, er, wait, I mean, have kits to match your photos, check out all the new products in the Heritage Scrap Shoppe! Two new designers, new designer collabs (half price too!!), and lots more will sure keep you busy with all your weekend pictures!

Check out the Heritage Scrap Gazette for a fantastic new digital *fashion show* of inspirational layouts! Victorian Rose has also updated her blog with all her new designs. Roberta T Designs has a new Canada Day Kit for all our neighbors to the north celebrating their own national holiday!

So, take a break from packing and planning your weekend to check out all the new kits and ideas available from Heritage Scrap. Then go out and load up those camera cards with hundreds of new photos to scrap, scrap, scrap!